Sebastian Vettel says credit is due to those who work at Ferrari for the progress they've made this season compared to last year, regardless of the squad's failure to capture either title.
Ferrari bounced back from a win-less 2016 campaign to fight for this year's title, taking four wins from the first half of the campaign, and though its championship quest unravelled, the outfit has remained at the front of the pack, as demonstrated by Vettel's Brazil win.
Vettel says that is the result of huge progress within the team and that must be given some recognition.
"Overall I think it was very positive this year," said the German. "Nobody expected Ferrari to be that strong, for us to be that strong.
"We made the biggest step, there was a lot of talk about other people but in the end we were there from the start and also until the end.
"We are in a position to fight for victory [in the final race], we won here [in Brazil], two cars on the podium. I think there’s a lot of positives.
"Of course if you miss out [on titles] it sort of sucks, there’s no other way [to say it], but you have to be fair as well.
"We hadn’t been very competitive last year, we hadn’t been very good developing the car and we’ve made massive progress this year so even if you look at the chance that maybe you missed, you have to give credit to all the people, to all the team for the step that we made."
Vettel is now targeting another step forward to deliver the sort of domination Red Bull and Mercedes have enjoyed in recent seasons, with Vettel contributing to the former's four straight titles from 2010 to 2013, and the Silver Arrows repeating the feat from 2014 to 2017.
"I think we can all feel that we’re getting stronger so hopefully we can carry that strength into the next couple of years, not just next year, not just the winter but also the future," he said.
"I think our objective is to bring Ferrari back properly, get there and dominate. That’s what we want to do."
